I want to

ChatWing for online chat

ChatWing is a product that I've reviewed before, but was asked to take another look at it since they've made a lot of changes. It's a nice site - you can create your own chatroom really quickly. New functionality includes the ability to include video straight in the chat box, as well as images and hotlinks. You can also password protect chat and force login and change styles. It also supports 9 different languages. I tried it out yesterday, and it's quite impressive. I shall be using it on my multimedia courses!

Zoom

Unified Meeting Experience This is another video conferencing tool, with free and paid versions. It says of itself that it's "a cloud service that provides a 3-in-1 meeting platform with HD video conferencing, mobility and web meetings. UMX also offers the first available mobile-screen sharing and an innovative hybrid cloud service." There's nothing to install - as long as you've got a webcam of course. The free version gives you an unlimited number of 1-1 meetings, unlimited group meeting for up to 25 people for a maximum of 40 minutes. It's got lots of good features, and though I haven't tried it myself, it looks good.

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Online Video Presentations Made Easy

via www.knovio.com

We're now getting to the point when running online presentations is the way forward. I've been playing around with a few tools to see what works well, and this is one called Knovio. It's really simple to use - you simply get a free account, upload your PowerPoint slides, then record yourself via your webcam, moving foward slide by slide as you do so. Knovio then stores the finished presentation for you, and you can share it via social media, a URL or via an embed code.

I've done a very brief one to show you how it works. The main gripe that I have is over the sound - it's really not very good at all. This may be a problem with my webcam, but I've recorded other stuff without any problems. I did re-record a few times, but it did it every single time, but I'll continue to explore it. I'm impressed enough with it to do so. It's entirely free, mainly because I think they're trying to sell another product off the back of it; KnowledgeVision.

Anyway, here's the video - apologies for the sound quality once again.

 

Hall.com - simple comms in your organisation

I am often asked about the availability of tools to make communications that much easier. HALL | Chat, Share, Connect is the latest one that I've discovered. There's a freebie and paid version, and this is what it does, taken from their website:

Group Chat Rooms

Create a room to stay connected with your team. Rooms can be open for anyone in your company to join, or set to private for only invited members. Features include chat, @mentions, inline previews, file sharing and notes. Conversations are searchable across all devices.

Instant Messaging

Have something private to say? Start a side conversation with a teammate or professional contact. Instant messaging chat history is stored on the cloud making chat history available across all your devices.

Video Chat

Meet with your team face-to-face to increase your team’s productivity with meetings that hold up to 12 people and powerful tools like screen sharing.

Screen Sharing

Show your team exactly what you're talking about. You can share your entire desktop or select a single application window.

Desktop, Web and Mobile

The Hall desktop app runs on Windows and Mac. The Hall web app is 6 times faster than existing enterprise solutions. Stay connected to Hall 24/7 with the free mobile web app and the iPhone and Android apps.

Contacts

Your contact list is instantly populated with your colleagues on Hall who registered with the same email domain. You can optionally add contacts outside of your company to have your professional contacts all in one place and ready to communicate in real-time to get things done.

TodaysMeet

TodaysMeet helps you embrace the backchannel and connect with your audience in realtime. You can encourage the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs.

 

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Anymeeting

via www.anymeeting.com

Want to conference from your desktop? I just found Anymeeting which looks interesting. Features include:

• Completely Free
• 200 Attendees
• Unlimited Meetings
• Video Conferencing
• Screen Sharing
• Application Sharing

• Recording
• Webinar Ticketing
• VoIP
• Conference Calling
• Public Profile
• Social Media Integration

• Text Chat
• Polling
• Invitations
• Surveys
• Reporting
• No Required Downloads

Which makes it look quite impressive! Advert driven though, and I don't know what sort of advertising, but it's worth exploring.

MeetingBurner

It says of itself: "Host your own online meeting or webinar.We’ve got everything you need – blazing fast desktop sharing, one-touch recording, free phone bridges, no participant downloads, and even attendee analytics – something you won’t find anywhere else…Get Your Free Account!" Confuses me as to why there's a whole section on credit card details and billing however... In the meantime, it looks fast, easy to use and efficient.

 

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• MeetingBurner: An easy, free, and fully featured platform for online seminars (thenextweb.com)
• MeetingBurner Aims To Make Online Meetings Fast and Simple (techzulu.com)
• MeetingBurner aims to disrupt the online meeting biz by giving itself away (venturebeat.com)

Cloudcasting

Cloudcasting Cloudcasting is an extremely flexible screen communication system. With a couple of clicks of the mouse, you can make your own ‘broadcast’. You can put together a message using powerpoint, text and video. You can enhance this with RSS feeds providing the latest weather forecasts, traffic reports, regional news and sports results. And you publish it. This way you control the ultimate TV channel enabling you to communicate directly and flexibly with your target groups, in a way that captivates their attention. This is a commercial product.

Live Video Broadcast Software

Stream and broadcast live video via www.nchsoftware.com

• Add live or recorded video to your website
• Compress and stream video for the Internet
• Video streams play in all popular browsers
• Broadcast from webcams or video input       

The free version is available if you link to it from your site, and the commercial version is between $49-$99 which looks a good price to me!

Meetin.gs

Meetin.gs. Feature rich free resource. Set up meetings, share resources, update realtime. Looks very useful. Not a conferencing function though.